Jeanine L'Ecuyer

Runs 00:27
As a journalist, writing hard-hitting, late-breaking stories is exciting, but with each story one has to make ethical decisions with the information they are given. Jeanine L'Ecuyer, the Director of Communications at Ziemba Waid Public Affairs spoke to about 30 students and faculty about crisis communication and the importance of making critical ethical decisions in such times.

The main problem at hand was the information the media wanted to release, and how much information L'Ecuyer and her PR team thought was necessary to release throughout the conflict.

The conflict L'Ecuyer and many members of the media team dealt with was a two-week prison hostage situation. Two prisoners held two prison guards captive in a guard tower at the Arizona Department of Corrections. The prisoners raped the hostages and hardly fed them for the two weeks they stayed in that tower.

L'Ecuyer knew information like this and more and the conflict arose when reporters wanted to release this type of information and L'Ecuyer felt the information, which was extremely personal had no reason to be released to the public. The prisoners of the jail, actually used the media, in the beginning to communicate to the public and to state their terms. This was one of the first times the media actually played a part in the actual hostage situation. The main members were Andy McKinney, a radio host from KTAR Radio, and Ilona Carson who was a fox anchor in Arizona. The men in the tower would only listen to McKinney and they initially only wanted to talk to Carson.

Jeanine and crew knew that this was an unprecedented act and the way they dealt with the situation, albeit not perfectly, was one of the most important public relations events of that time. One can learn moving forward that although some people look down on Twitter and Facebook for its lack of professionalism from some users, this would have been one of the more important tools in a situation like this one where information was not coming from many places. Twitter would have been able to share information in a quicker and more global manner and hopefully, a more simple way to communicate with the public and hopefully it would have kept more people involved.